British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer maintained that he will remain the in office through 2027 amid rumours of a potential internal Labour Party coup swirling around Westminster, while Nigel Farage’s Reform UK continues to hold a commanding lead in the polls.
In his first interview of the new year, Prime Minister Starmer attempted to put a confident spin on his struggling administration, which has failed to deliver on key promises such as stopping the flow of illegal boat migrants across the English Channel or returning to a focus on economic growth.
Such failures have seen approval of his government fall to a dismal 12 per cent in YouGov’s final survey of 2025. For context, this was the same level of approval that Rishi Sunak’s Tory government enjoyed before being kicked out of office by Starmer at the 2024 general election.
Nevertheless, Starmer asserted that he was “very proud” of the “material changes” that his government has brought to the lives of the British public, in comments reported by the Press Association news wire.
Asked by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg whether he expected to face a leadership challenge, Starmer said: “Nobody wants to go back to that. It’s not in our national interest.”
“Under the last government, we saw constant chopping and changing of leadership, of teams, it caused utter chaos, utter chaos, and it’s amongst the reasons that the Tories were booted out so effectively at the last election,” he explained.
“I will be sitting in this seat by 2027,” Starmer predicted.
The embattled prime minister appears to be more confident than his constituents, half of whom expect Starmer to be removed from office before the end of the year. Rumours have also been about for months pointing to various members of the Labour Party who could manage to replace him, including figures such as Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham and Starmer’s former deputy, Angela Rayner.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has also predicted that economic turmoil and public dissatisfaction would force Starmer to call for an early general election, rather than waiting until the next scheduled vote in 2029.
An early election would most likely benefit the Brexit boss and his upstart party, which led in the polls throughout the entirety of 2025.
The latest Multilevel Regression and Post-stratification (MRP) poll from More in Common, which seeks to provide an accurate representation of the number of seats each party is on course to win at the next election, found that Reform has managed to maintain its lead over parties.
According to the survey, Reform is on pace to win 381 seats, up from five currently, and enough for a strong of 112 over all other parties. Trailing in a distant second would be the governing Labour Party, which is projected to fall from 411 seats to just 85. The traditional party of government, the Conservatives, would further fall to a mere 70 seats.
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